Time After Time
by writingrose2008
Summary: Susan Stark is a genius, billionaire, ex-playmate, and philanthropist in keeping with her brother and father before her... but can a 'man out of time' help her see there is more to life than she knows? Steve/OC.
1. Prologue: Daddy's Little Girl

Hello, all. Thank you for taking the time to click on this story. I hope you will find it entertaining.

I suppose I should take this moment to remind you I don't anything but the majority of the plot and my O/C. Everything else is property of Marvel, particularly Steve Rodgers (much to my distress.)

So, with that in mind, I give you…

Prologue:

Daddy's Little Girl

"Have I ever told you about the time I flew Captain America across enemy lines to save his best friend and the rest of the 107th?"

Howard Stark sat down in a too-small pink chair and smiled at the little lying in bed to his right. A copy of his brown eyes looked at him eagerly. It was a look he wasn't used to from his family. At least, not from his wife or son. Tony had grown out of his war stories many years ago, but had never cared from them anyway. His daughter was the only who understood. She was the only one still listening after all these years.

Susan Stark nearly jumped out of her bed in excitement. She knew the story, had recited it word for word hundreds of times. In her five-year-old mind, it never got old. Every year on her birthday, her father came to visit her and told her the same story. Those were the best days, full of presents and falling asleep listening to the sound of a voice telling her stories about Captain America.

She saw them both as heroes.

The young girl practically bounced up and down on the mattress while her father spoke. Both of them knew perfectly well it was passed her bed time. They knew her mother would be up at any moment, telling them to pipe down, and to usher Howard out of them room. Neither of them cared about any of that in those moments. Both of them were engrossed in a different world one of them had never seen before and one was still secretly searching for.

All too soon, as if on a cue, a woman appeared in the doorway looking at father and daughter like she had caught them misbehaving. At almost the same moment, both of their faces dropped. Susan was nowhere near ready for the stories to end. She stood up on her bed and fearlessly jumped the distance to Howard's lap, relishing the short moment she spent unsupported in the air. She half expected her tiny weight to keep him from leaving. The stern look on her mother's face intensified. Howard wrapped his arms around his daughter and grinned down at her mischievously in spite of himself.

"Quite the little flier already aren't you, little Susie?" He mused at her self-satisfied look, so much like his own already.

"Uh-Huh" she shook her head, her brown curls dancing wildly with her movement. "One day, I'm gonna fly all the way to Aus-tria. Just like you."

"I have no doubt you will," Howard indulged.

"But now, it's time for little pilots to go to bed."

"'But mommy-"

"But nothing, Susan. Your father has to go and you have to go to sleep. It's a school night."

"Maggie, come on."

"I've asked you not to call me that, Howard." Susan involuntarily hugged her father tighter at the tone in her mother's voice.

"I'm sorry. Margret" Howard's voice remained level, unphased by the woman in the doorway's anger. "I'd like a few more minutes along with my daughter please."

Margret looked down to her watch and then back to the man impatiently. "Ten minutes. And I am counting."

Without another word, the door to Susan's room unceremoniously closed. No footsteps followed the sound. Father and daughter both knew she would spend the next ten minutes tapping her foot and staring at her watch outside the door. The extra time was a stretch, an extra birthday gift from a mother who didn't believe in spoiling her daughter by giving her everything she wanted. It was yet another point she and the man inside the room disagreed on.

Howard's grip on the little girl's middle tightened as he stood up and lifted her with some effort above his head. Susan extended her arms as make-believe wings, her childish delight unable to keep her from giggling. If she tried hard enough, she could imagine clouds around her, blue sky as far as she could see, and flying without falling into her father's lap or his arms to help her.

"Stark control tower to Susie," Howard called in a mock pilot voice, "You are cleared for landing."

Susan laughed louder, feeling the slight resistance of the air around her as she got lower, finally finding herself back in her bed with a single bounce. Her father was standing above her now, looking at her in a way she didn't understand. She reached for one of her many stuffed bears scattered out across her bed. They were both quiet for what felt like forever until she finally spoke.

"Daddy, where's Captain America now?"

Howard sighed and looked at his daughter quietly for another moment. He was astonished at how perceptive she already was, surly another genius like himself (hopefully, she would be more focused than Tony was.) Her 5-year-old mind had hit upon the target question, one he had been trying to answer for the better part of 20 years. If she only knew… how badly he wanted to know the answer to her question, to know where the man he considered his greatest scientific contribution to the world (besides his children, of course) was. He has spent years and millions of dollars in the artic trying to find answers.

"He's lost right now, Susie."

The look on her face dropped instantly, as if someone had snatched the toy right out of her hand. He instantly regretted the level of honesty in his reply.

"But… he'll come back… won't he?"

"I believe he will."

"But when, daddy?" Susan demanded. "When will he come back?"

"Someday, maybe a long time from now, when the world needs him like it did before, he'll come back."

"Will I get to see him then?"

"I'll make sure you do," he promised. Howard was nowhere near ready to give up on trying to find him. When Susan had been born, he had at last came to the conclusion that it may not even happen in his lifetime. Yet, nights like these, seeing that passion for his life's work had been passed onto the next generation, gave him hope that the search would continue without him. Something about how she spoke, even so young, made him believe she would be the one to finish the search he began at the end of World War II. Like his son, she had a destiny. Tony was destined to inherit his empire. Susan was destined to inherit his obsession.

Susan's smile returned. She trusted her father to be as good as his word. Even so young, she knew he could do whatever he wanted. If he told her she would one day be as good a pilot as he was and meet Captain America, then that was exactly what she was going to do. Nothing was going to stand in the way of the things that had been promised to her. It never had before in the years she could remember.

The little girl watched as Howard pulled something out of his suit coat. She hugged her bear tighter in anticipation. It was a tiny box wrapped in red, white, and blue paper, the color of Captain America's suit. The wrapping was yet another private joke the two of the shared. She smiled wider and waited impatiently for her father to hand her the box.

"But if you're going to be a pilot, you'll need this." Howard watched as he handed the gift to his daughter, her small hands practically shaking with want. He watched her expertly rip the wrapping paper away, the product of a full day's practice.

When Susan opened the box, she saw something silver. A circular something around a chain. It looked like something she had seen before, but couldn't remember where. Her forehead creased in concentration.

"It is a locket, daddy?" She asked.

"Not quite Susie," Howard explained, lowering one of his hand sand unleashing the clasp to reveal what the circle held. "It's a compass. I had one just like this when I flew during the war. It always helped me find my way home. Do you know who else had one?"

Their eye met again and Susan nodded. Her father told her Captain America had one that he kept a picture inside of. Her father had one that had brought him back safe from the war to be her daddy. And now, she had one. To her, it was belonging to a group of heroes. Both men she had known to have a compass like that had saved the world.

'_Someday,'_ the young girl thought to herself. _'I'm going to save the world too.'_


	2. Chapter 1: Material Girl

Thank you all for your interest so far! I really appreciate it. You are all awesome 3 I know I'm not giving a lot away at the moment, but if you give it time, Susan will eventually spill her guts.

RATING WARNING:

This chapter contains sexual activities. Consider it Susan's equivalent to Tony's woman from Brown. There's nothing too graphic, just mentioning of body parts and nudity. If you're old enough to watch Iron Man, I think you can handle this. I swear it's not pornography. It's just meant to give you an idea of her relationships pre-Steve. I wasn't kidding about the ex-playmate thing. She is, after all, a Stark ;)

Consider yourself warned and please enjoy…

Chapter 1:

A Material Girl

Susan Stark sighed with pleasure as she rose up from the weight on top of her. She maneuvered herself to the side of her enormous 4-poster bed before mounting the man that had been on top of her for the past few hours. Her breath came in deeper gasp now. She felt released, as if seeing the sky the first time in weeks.

'_Much better'_ she thought to herself. There was something about being on top that excited her. Control. The rhythm… duration… everything was in her control now. No more being at her partner's mercy. He was at hers now. That was exactly how she liked things. Not just her relationships.

There wasn't much room in her life for things that didn't see it her way.

The mixture of newly regained power and the nights combination of Grand Marnier and champagne made her head buzz in just the way she loved on the weekends. After a long week of work, it was just what she needed. She needed her head to feel light, forgetting about her job, the stress that went with it, and the demands of being constantly in the public's gaze. She needed the release that came from being with men, pouring her energy into something self-indulgent.

Susan wrapped her legs expertly around the firm body beneath her, she felt herself relax and being to focus on the task she was in the middle of. The man's breathing was increasing to heaving gasps.

"I'm gonna put in a bullet, pull the trigger, Shoot to thrill, play to kill. Too many women with too many pills. Shoot to thrill, play to kill got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will. Yeah!"

The sounds of classic rock suddenly filled the room, coming from the iPhone Susan had put on the nightstand before getting into bed. She let out another sigh, this time in exaggeration. Her concentration was suddenly focused on the piece of furniture and the phone on her right. Beneath her, she felt her partner release a similar sound.

"Seriously? You're going to answer your phone right now?"

Susan rolled her eyes in a downward direction, not dignifying his question with anything other than the look and three simple words. "It's my brother."

"Tony Stark? It's three in the morning. He's probably drunk dialing you. Come on."

Ignoring him, she snatched her phone, slid her finger over the screen, and put it to her ears. The time and the patience didn't exist in her mind at the moment for her to explain to him that her brother didn't drunk dial her, not since she had modified JARVIS 5 years ago not to put those kind of calls through. He had, at least in his mind, a good reason for trying to contact her.

"Sister speaking,"

"Hey, Susie Q, you're not going to believe this." Her brother replied. She took note of his voice. He didn't sound drunk… at least not any more than usual. He sounded as serious as he ever got. She settled in to pay attention to what he was going to say.

"I might when you tell me," she retorted.

"You sound huffy. More than usual. Are you… with someone?"

"That's none of your business."

"Okay, that's a yes." Tony paused a moment. Susan imagined mind him sticking out his tongue and faking a vomiting motion in disgust. No matter how many times it happened, realizing the extracurricular activities of the other was still over the line of brother/sister TMI. "In that case, I'll keep it code. That thing you've been looking for, we've found it."

"You're going to have to modify that code, bro. I'm looking for a lot at the moment."

"That thing in the ice, the one dad lost."

"Oh my god."

Susan's head was suddenly devoid of any and all buzz. She was the most sober she had been all day. Though she had the urge to pinch herself to make sure this was not a dream, she settled for shifting her thighs to a new angle. She was sure she felt that. It wasn't pain, but it was all she could do given her position and the circumstances. Her mind was rushed back to the past. All she could see or hear was her father. In the recesses of her mind, she could hear words she had once heard before:

_"Someday, maybe a long time from now, when the world needs him like it did before, he'll come back."_

It had been over twenty years since the fateful birthday that had been the last time she had seen her father. Howard Stark was long gone. Susan was suddenly struck by the reality that her dad hadn't lived to see this day, when his famous science experiment had been found. She wondered if, at least, she had done him proud in this one small way.

"Found religion fast, huh, Susie Q?" Her brother's voice on the other line brought her back to the present and the increasingly precarious situation at hand.

"Shut up." She snapped. "If this is a joke, if you're lying, Tony, I'll personally put a pair of my stilettos so down your lying throat, you'll cough leather"

"Will you relax," Tony said, his tone still relaxed and self-satisfied, as usual. "Geez, I thought you usually were more relaxed after… you know. Anyway, I'm dead serious. Pepper is reading the jet now. I'm going to pay our frozen soldier a visit."

"Wait for me." She said instantly, no longer convinced her brother was hoaxing her.

"Duh. Why else would I would be calling you?"

"I'll be there in 15."

"Take your time. Get rid of what-the-hell-ever-his-name-is-this-week and get to the hanger."

"Like I said, 15"

"Okay, Susie Q. See ya then."

Susan removed the phone from her face and killed the line. Suddenly, she was again completely focused. This time not on her partner, but on something else bigger than her need for release or anything else in her world. In one motion, she swung her leg to the other side of the man and jutted quickly out of bed. When she hit the ground, she began reaching down to the floor for her underwear, long since dissuaded on the bedroom floor.

"What the hell are you doing?" The man in her bed rose up into a sitting position, his face looking at her with aggravation.

"I'm leaving." She relied matter-of-factly, not bothering to look up at him or stop hoisting her panties up to their proper place on her hips. "Get out."

"Get out. That's all you've got to say to me?" He spat, suddenly getting out of bed, approaching her. "I thought we were having fun, Susie Q"

The last words he spoke made Susan look up. She gave him a look that was her eyes equivalent to daggers. There was only one person on the planet permitted to call her by anything less than Susan and it wasn't him. However, all the hate she could muster in her gaze didn't deter him from coming closer to her and putting his arms condescendingly on her shoulders. She jolted back, slapping at his arms like he had hit her. It didn't cross her mind until seconds later that the gesture was likely not threatening with her bare breasts moving about. She had yet to locate her bra.

"Don't touch me." She threatened.

"Touch you, babe, I've been inside you all night."

"Yea 'been.' Past tense. Hope you enjoyed it there. Now, I'm putting on a bra. The show's over."

"Over?" He asked. "Are you ever gonna call me again?"

"Actually, you lost any and all rights to my body a few seconds ago when you called me babe."

"What?" The man looked at Susan like she had told him Santa wasn't real. She guessed she was sort of like a man's equivalent to a present. The thought made her even more uncomfortable. She frantically took a few more steps back and reached for her skirt, thankfully finding her bra underneath. "I didn't know, okay?

"Whatever," she shrugged, half at the fact she was no longer the least bit interested in what he was saying, half to maneuver her bra into its place. Once she was at least not naked anymore, she realized the man wasn't going anywhere, at least not without someone else escorting him.

"Quentin!" Susan yelled.

"You mean to tell me this doesn't bother you at all? The fact that a few minutes ago you were on top of me and now you're throwing me out of your house?"

"Oh, I'm not throwing you out." She corrected him, not even trying to not sound condescending "I'm yelling for my assistant. He'll escort you out."

Just as the last syllable left her mouth, the bedroom door opened and a man in a purple t-shirt and grey sweatpants appeared in the room. He didn't seem the least bit surprised to see his employer in nothing but her underwear and her partner in nothing, still looking at her in astonishment.

"You called, boss?"

"Yes, will you please arrange a cab for Mr. Harris, wherever he needs to go and pay for it please." At first thought, Susan had meant the last part as an attempt at being nice. She had enjoyed the night for the most part; he at least didn't deserve to pay for his own way home. It wasn't until after the words left his mouth, she realized she had probably killed what little of his manhood there was left. She paused a moment, then continued. "And please get my car ready. I need to get the hanger ASAP. It's urgent."

"Right away," Quentin's voice wasn't judgmental at all. After so many years, he was used to doing her dirty work. Susan nodded and grinned in his direction. He was her equivalent to Tony's Pepper Potts: efficient, even more fashionable, and just as irreplaceable in her eyes.

"You're unbelievable," Mr. Harris said as Quentin began gathering and handing him his clothes to usher him out of the room even faster, managing to always keep them at a distance from himself.

Susan was too engrossed in getting into her suit and taming her curly (now wild) hair to acknowledge his snide comment. Soon after, Quentin had him by the arm and out the bedroom door, leaving her to the rest of getting ready. Just before he closed off the door, he looked back at her. Susan just shrugged her shoulders while reaching to position her platform shoes on her heels, but was unable to hide a self-satisfied grin on her face.

"_Boys may come and boys may go and that's alright you see-"_ He began singing in an upbeat voice.

"_Experience has made me rich and now they're after me" _She finished the verse before turning back to the mirror at her dresser and putting up her hair, hearing the door close and being alone at last with her thoughts.


	3. Chapter 2: First Sight

Hello again, my fellow fans of the Avengers. I apologize for not having this chapter faster. I hope you find it satisfying.

By the way, I don't own any of Avengers.

Chapter 2:

First Sight

Susan's driver, a tall, red-headed man everyone called Jack (though she wasn't entirely convinced that it was his given name) was waiting outside unfailingly when she exited through the door of her place. The cool, polluted air of Manhattan hit her suddenly, sending a grin up her face instantly. She loved New York, at times to the point she was sometimes sure it was her soul mate. They were both energetic, though admittedly with a few rough edges where few people could see. Judgment upon both of them came based upon appearances: the city by its buildings and lack of green and clear sky and the woman by her social status, the Prada suit and heels she saw fit to appear in even before the sun rose.

Susan thought that when every else went to hell, she and New York could still sit in an upscale bar and have cosmos Sex and the City style. She might be old and wrinkled and the borough's building might be crumbling around them, but it didn't matter.

"Good morning, Miss Stark," Jack's politeness interrupted her musing as he opened the last door on the too-lavish-for-one-person-but-what-the-hell limo for her.

"I think it's going to be, Jack," she replied, the secret smile between her and her location yet lingering on her face.

The man nodded slightly as if he knew exactly what she was talking about; although there was really no way he could understand. Susan had no doubt as she slid into the vehicle that the driver assumed it had something to do with Mr. Harris and what they had spent the night doing. It honestly felt like an eternity now since the man's weight had been on top her, smothering her with lack of control. She had to take a moment to remind herself. Yes, it had been tonight… but all that had been before... before Tony's call that changed her world.

Once again, as Jack pulled out of the valet lot and onto the New York streets (still busy even at this time) she had the urge to pinch herself. This time, there was nothing to stop her: no brother on her phone and no Harris beneath her. She gave into the urge, feeling the slight sting of her nails closing in on the skin of her wrist. It felt like it always had. This was real. After all the time, energy, and money, it was happening. Her father's greatest contribution to the war was finally found. She hadn't given up, not even after countless urges from Tony to take the money and put it in more useful places than the Artic. It wasn't like he had needed it and now it had paid off.

There were so many unanswered questions buzzing in her head, Susan's head felt full. She still had no idea exactly where the Artic team had found him, in what kind of shape he was in, or if she would ever truly get to meet Captain America like her father had promised as a child. Now that she was sitting and thinking about it, she could barely remember what he looked like. She had seen a few pictures years ago of the man out of the mask and uniform he had become known to the world in. But she could barely remember the old black and white newspaper images then. What most people knew him dressed in (herself included) was covered in red, white, and blue.

An old adage suddenly flashed in her mind: _'You should never meet your heroes.' _She wondered to herself if that advice brought down from the ages also applied to actual superheroes. Surely someone who was credited with being the first superhero couldn't be a disappointment. He must be everything people had said about him: self-sacrificing, caring, and idealistic to a fault. It also occurred to her that it would be a lot for a man to live up to. Would the expectation change him? Susan of all people understood that. There were, after all, reasons why she and Tony drank and never stayed with one person longer than a couple of nights (Her brother's new exception being Pepper.)

Somehow, this kind of reasoning always seemed to bring her back to her father. It was a subject she only every thought of. Speaking of Howard Stark around Tony in almost every context was off limits. When the two of them had first met, Susan had expected to feel a connection to him as she had but had quickly realized that was not the case. For a sort time, she had operated under the illusion she had found someone to share that particular part of her, the obsession she had inherited from him. Yet, it was now all too clear to her by this point in her life it was a gene their dad had failed to give him in reproduction. She had grown to accept it. Besides, he Tony was still noisy enough to be taking a private jet at 3:00am to the Artic to see what their father had created.

Similar circular, unproductive thoughts occupied her mind until she reached the hanger and Jack came to a stop. She slid her legs with some effort over to the door of the limo. A few seconds later, the door opened to reveal Tony, dressed smartly as always in a black suit with red detail, waiting to usher her out of the vehicle.

"That was 20 minutes, by the way," he brought to her attention in mock annoyed voice.

"Traffic was moving slow for 3:00am."

"Sure. Blame the traffic, Susie Q."

"Good morning to you too, asshole," Susan retorted in response to his snide comment.

"Good morning," as if in an effort to avoid an early morning display of sibling rivalry, Pepper Potts appeared at Tony's side.

"Hey Pepper," Susan grinned as her brother was taking a cup of coffee from a holder his assistant/girlfriend/it's complicated. "One of those had better be for me, bro."

"Of course," Pepper selected one of the containers and extended it in her direction. "Carmel Mocha. No extra sugar. Plenty of cream."

"I don't see how you do it" she mused, taking the cup from Pepper's hands, putting it to her lips, and realizing it was perfect. There were very few people that could manage to make coffee just the way she liked it.

"She's a genius," Tony offered.

Pepper scoffed at his attempt at 3:00am flattery but couldn't hide a slight smile that appeared on her face.

"I swear if you don't marry her, I will."

"Getting sentimental in your old age?" Tony responded. Though Susan had only meant it to be a Stark snide comment, they both knew the idea of either of them walking the isle in a church was laughable. Not to mention, she had a vision of being struck down the moment she walked into a place of worship on the principal of the playboy bunny tattoo inked on her right hip alone.

"No matter how old I get, I'll never be as old as you. Just bare that in mind when you contemplate who you want to pull the plug on you…"

"Okay, I think the jet is ready for you two now," Pepper once again intervened.

"You're not coming?" Susan asked a bit surprised.

"I have board meetings all day today. I'm going to get a few more hours of sleep before I go in. This is more of a family outing anyway."

"Knock 'em dead, Miss Potts," Tony gave her his flirtiest smile and leaned in to plant a not-too-intense-because-my-sister-is-watching kiss on her lips.

"Running your company is all in a day's work, Mr. Stark." Pepper returned before giving into his lips.

One kiss was enough to aggravate Susan's gag reflex, already working overtime as a result of the night's alcohol intake. Luckily for her, Tony and Pepper were done after that. She moved in the direction of Happy and his limo, leaving brother and sister to approach and boarded the jet in near perfect unison.

She got comfortable in a seat opposite her brother and enjoyed her perfect coffee. The caffeine wasn't the best option for her in her state, but no Stark was ever actually known for controlling their vices. It did make her mind more alert, no longer running rapid like it had been during the limo. Once they took off and she ingested enough of the sweet-but-not-too liquid, she decided to try and mark some of the questions off her complied list.

"So… where did they find him?"

"In the tundra not far from the projected path of the crash. Global warming and continental shift just finally shook him loose."

She nodded, though she hadn't needed the third grade geography lesson.

"What about him? Is he-?"

"Don't know. Before our medical team got there, SHIELD got ahold of him."

"You mean we're going to have to break into a government facility just to see what we've spent time and money looking for these past 70 years?" Susan nearly popped the lid off of her coffee cup. It wasn't that she saw the prospect difficult… or without amusement. Yet, SHIELD had been such a pain in her and Tony's asses since he had come back from Afghanistan with a new toy. They were constantly taking things that didn't belong to them.

"You scared of a little illegal activity, Susie Q?"

"Not a chance."

"Good."

There was a long silence in the air between them after that. Susan was trying to contemplate exactly how good SHIELD could have made security around Captain America in less than 24 hours. But something else from her previous deluge of thoughts on the way to the airport was still on her mind. After a few minutes of thinking, judging her brother's potential reaction, she took another long sip of her coffee and spoke up.

"Tony?"

"Yea?

"Did dad tell you stories about him?"

"All the time."

"Do you remember?"

"Not really, Susie Q. It got dull after a while. All the same, you know? Blah blah Captain America blah blah killed Nazis blah blah hero…"

"Then why are you going to see him if it doesn't mean anything to you?"

"Are you kidding? This guy practically has Stark Industries written all over him. No way SHIELD gets all the poking and prodding to themselves."

Susan was quiet after that. She had all the answers she was sure he could offer. To her brother, the man was a lab rat, an experiment with interesting results to be studied. That was all he wanted. She, on the other hand, wasn't sure what she wanted. Her father had promised her she would meet him one day and it suddenly occurred to her she had no idea what she would say or do when the time came. She had a strong feeling leading with _'Hey, I'm Howard Stark's daughter and I've spent my entire adult life looking for you' _wasn't the best option. That was the reason she was flying to Artic with her brother, but she had no clue what would happen when they landed.

At some point on the flight, Susan drifted off into sleep in the midst of the plush seat cushions of the Stark private jet. Her mind drifted off in flashed. At first, they were all just red, white, and blue and reminded her of the birthday gifts her father used to give her. But, then they shifted into black and white. Images became more visible. A man with his short hair all combed over one side and slightly unnerving eyes appeared. Somehow, she was close to him. He was a considerable amount taller than she was, bending over slightly in her direction. On instinct, she knew what he wanted. When her greyscale lips met hers, it was like nothing she had ever felt before. Completion. Wholeness. Safety.

"Wake up, Susie Q, we're here,"

Tony's voice made everything around her disappear. The man left her mid-lip lock. Her eyes opened and she came back slowly into the world around her and Technicolor. She gave him a momentary hateful look that she hoped he took as just for waking her and not waking her up from a good dream.

Getting inside and on SHIELD's elevator seemed almost too easy to her. Susan wondered how long her brother had known they were going to break in, but didn't bother to ask. She took the few minutes she had in a space with mirror-like reflective qualities in its shine to look at her appearance. She smoothed her skirt and made sure her curly hair was all still mostly contained in the bun she had put in hours before. Finally, she blotted her lipstick, making it the shade she liked. She could feel the man with her rolling his eyes. It made no never mind to her.

One of the things he had shared with her was the room on the bottom floor they were supposedly keeping him. When the elevator door opened, she exited before her brother and went on her own ahead to the number he had told her. She froze at the sight of the door and the large security system in front of it demanding a 6-didgit access code. She sighed in frustration. One more obstacle in her way, one that she had no idea how to solve. She contemplated waiting for Tony, but he was in no hurry to make it inside and she had no desire to have came hours on a plane to stand outside Captain America's door. She had one theory about the 6 number, one that was a long shot under the circumstances, but her fingers were itching and she couldn't resist the attempt.

7-4-1-9-2-0 She entered the number quick, suddenly thinking a wrong guess would trigger an alarm and land her in a federal prison. Something decided to favor her, however, in spite of the overwhelming odds. She could hear the locks on the heavy metal door open. Her lips curved into a self-satisfied smile.

"What the hell?" her brother whispered, coming up behind her. "I had the code."

"Apparently, so did I?"

"How?"

"The code is Captain America's birthday."

"I'm not even gonna ask how you know that."

"I listened to dad's stories. All of dad's stories."

With that, they exchanged their glance that indicated their discussion of the subject was over. Both of them took a step into the room they weren't supposed to be anywhere near without saying another word to the other. Susan felt emotion pulsing through her body as her eyes scanned the room and came to rest on the figure lying the in the middle of the room. The room itself was freezing. She decided it was because SHIELD had decided not to unfreeze him all at once. There were several machines hooked up to him, humming a methodical tune in the air. She realized, somehow, he was alive in that moment in the room with her and her brother.

Susan could stand her curiosity no longer. She left her brother where he was standing and approached the unconscious figure in the room. Through the bits of ice, she could see they had taken off the material over his face. His blonde hair was wet and plastered to his head in a way she imagined he wouldn't have liked. She was fixated what seemed like an eternity on his face, boyish in spite of his age and the things he had witness in his time matched against a pair of lips that made her wonder if he had ever even been kissed before he had crashed the plain into the artic. She shook her head, banishing the thought from her head.

The famous uniform was skin tight on him and only made more so by the freezing cold water melting every second on it. His arms and chest were some of the most defined and muscular she had ever seen (which was saying something in her point of view.) She didn't know exactly how much of it was him and how much of it was her father and Dr. Erskine's enhancement, not that it didn't look proportional but her noisiness was growing by the minute. All in all, he was the best looking genetically enhanced science experiment she had ever seen. She glanced down again at the large arm next to her and her own muscles tensed up. The urge to touch what was in front her was nearly uncontrollable until…

"What are you doing here, Stark?"

She mentally cursed before turning around. Her brother was still barely in the room and now standing toe-to-toe with an older SHIELD agent she recognized him instantly.

"Coulson. Long time, no see," she greeted.

"Miss Stark," he acknowledged before turning back to her brother. "Nothing in this room is a toy for you to play with."

"Funny" Tony retorted. "He looks a lot like an overgrown action figure."

"Come on, Phil, did you honestly think you could pull our dad's work out of the ice and we wouldn't come looking?"

"Captain Rodgers isn't a science experiment," the hateful tone of voice was something she hadn't ever heard from his before. "He's an American hero and he deserves respect, even from you two."

"I wasn't going to break him," Susan said, looking at her hand, still extended in his direction and deciding it was best to lower it for now.

"You shouldn't even be in here. Opening the door to this room interferes with the rate the ice melts. If we bring him back too fast, it could be too much for his body to take. It could kill him."

"He's survived this long. I think he's tougher than he looks," Tony remarked, managing somehow to be the only one in the room that seemed unimpressed by the man still partially frozen in ice.

"Honestly, Phil, I think that should be the least of your worries. He's only fast forwarded about… what? 70 years."

Agent Phil Colson looked at both of the Starks in the room with a gaze he hoped intimated him. For a SHIELD agent, he wasn't nearly as physically imposing as his superior could be. He seemed to be the only one who was taking anything seriously. Was he the only one who got how extraordinary finding the man was? How extraordinary he was? From the time he had been a child, he had grown up reading about Captain America, the television specials and the early comic books. Even now, he had a vintage set of training cards carefully in his jacket pocket. They were like a luck charm to him. The idea Howard's own children disrespected him this much made him even more angry.

"You two need to leave. Now." He commanded, hoping he had transferred some of Fury's authority into his tone at that moment.

"We just got here," Susan knew Tony wouldn't care enough to argue with Phil, especially as worked up as he was getting at them. But she was ready to fight him on this.

"Leave or I'll have you both arrested for breaking into government property."

"Try it. We'll see who has more friends in Washington."

"Come on, Susie Q, before we give the agent an aneurism."

"Could you not take my side? Just once. You flew all this way just to turn around and go home?"

"We've seen what we've came to see, caused enough chaos for one day. I'm sure the agents will be more aware of security breaches in the future."

"Count on that, Mr. Stark."

Susan realized that she was fighting a battle she couldn't win when the logical side of her brain kicked in. She knew as mad as he was, Phil wasn't kidding about having them arrested. She also knew when Tony was ready, the jet would take off with or without her. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a frozen Captain American and SHIELD agents wasn't a possibility that was appealing to her. Her gaze shifted downward to the boy-like face lying at her side one last time.

'_You haven't seen the last of me, Captain.'_ She thought to herself. _'This is just the beginning.'_


	4. Chapter 3: Over the Rainbow

Hello all! I want to take a second to thank you all for your response to the little idea in my head. It is more encouraging that you'll ever know.

This chapter is better known in my head as Rose-takes-a-single-reference-from-the-Avengers-and-blows-it-out-of-proportion. But I hope you'll enjoy it all the same.

I humbly beg your indulgence, remind you I don't own the Avengers, and present to you:

Chapter 3:

Over the Rainbow

In Brooklyn, Steve Rodgers kept to himself. Director Fury had tried not to smother him after he had woken up and ran into present day Time Square. He had told him he could come and go as he pleased. He wasn't exactly on active duty since the war he had been fighting had been over 3 times as long as he had been alive. No, that wasn't right. He was that old. He didn't look it and yet he felt it. Each time he walked around New York, he felt how different everything had gotten since he had crashed the plane into the ocean. It took him a while to put his finger on it, but he knew nothing was as it had been before.

For a couple of weeks, he had tried to get used to it. He had gone about it like a mission of observation. Very slowly, he tried to revisit places he thought stood the most chance of being familiar to him. One day, he made the journey to Central Park where his mother had taken him as a boy to play and to take whatever stale bread they could spare for the week to feed the pigeons. In spite of the depression and the utter scarcity of everything, she had never lost her giving spirit that came from years of nursing patients. Any starving stray animal or person would never be turned away from the Rodger's house. _'None of God's creatures deserve to_ _starve'_ were the words Sarah Rodgers had lived by. In a deep, locked away place in his mind, he was glad his mother hadn't lived to fully see the impact of what the Germans had done, to see pictures of Jewish and other men, women, and children with dead eyes and nothing more than bones and leathery skin on top. 70 years after Hitler and there were more begging people in the park in New York than he remembered as a child.

Compassion. That was what the world had lost in the years he had been out. Growing up in a time when no one had anything to speak of, he had seen the best in people, doing what they had to keep themselves, their children, and their neighbors alive. The realization had hit him on his venture to a baseball game. The Dodgers were no longer a New York thing, so he had willed himself to shift his sporting allegiance to the Mets, telling himself as long as it was a team in the state he was born in, it didn't matter. He had just intended to blend in and try to remember the days before the United States had entered World War II, before Pearl Harbor when he and his dad used to save pennies in a jar in the kitchen all year long just to go and see a game for his birthday. He had never minded sharing his special day with his country. _'Just means you'll be great someday, just like America'_ his father had told him. Steve wouldn't ever go that far in thinking of himself (just a 90 pound kid from Brooklyn) but he never argued with his old man when he said that to his young son. In fact, they were the last that he had said to him before he had shipped out to join the 107th… the trip he never came home from. In the same locked place in his mind, he was glad his father hadn't lived to see what the country he fought for had become not even a century later. He would also have disowned him for acting like a dancing monkey for so long after the experiment on him had enabled him to do more.

His afternoon of baseball hadn't started out badly. The ticket had been slid under the door of his barracks. When he had found Fury just before he was leaving for the game to thank him, he had been informed it hadn't been him but a man he hadn't met yet named Coulson. The director promised to point the man when the time was right (whatever that meant) and he could express his thanks later. As unconformable as he felt accepting a gift from a man he didn't even know, he was getting desperate to have an excuse to leave. The SHIELD agents all looked at him like he would likely sprout a second head at any moment. Images of the monkey on a unicycle he had envisioned while selling war bonds flashed in his head. Being around only them all of time was grinding on his patience. Most days, they made him wish just to be plain, unimpressive Steve Rodgers again.

It was days such as those he was glad the only part of Captain America anyone seemed to recognize was the uniform. Outside the walls of the SHIELD facility, he it was fairly simple to pretend was just a guy who hit the gym… a lot. He put on a baseball cap, walked into the stadium, and he was just like any other guy in his 20's there. Almost. But he was the only one that needed to know that. He sat in his seat (though he remembered them being a lot bigger) just like everyone else until a man everyone else except him seemed to recognize appeared on the field and asked everyone to stand for the National Anthem. Steve was glad to discover one thing (at least) hadn't changed out of all the differences he had seen thus far.

But the thoughts of relief came too soon. As him and nearly everyone else around him stood up as the man instructed, he watched the man to his right not budge from his seat. Now that he was noticing the guy, he also noticed the smell of cheap beer permeated the air around him. He was drunk. He was drunk and disrespectful. He was drunk and disrespectful not only to his country (which was still one of the wealthiest in the world) but to people who had given his life so that there could be the game he was about to watch, to his father… his mother… to Peggy who had also fought tooth and nail to prove a woman was even fit to serve her country. Steve blinked and told himself he wasn't going to get upset. He was going to ignore the man.

And he made it halfway through, right up to _'Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight…'_without saying a word. 'Just a few more words' he told himself. 'Just ignore him.'

"O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?"

That was when he had heard the man mutter something under his breath. He couldn't make out the entire statement, only America which was really all he needed. He quickly bent down until he was face to face with the man and his beer breath.

"You wanna repeat what you said to someone's face, buddy?" He asked without the slightest bit of fear in his tone.

"Yea," he answered in a heavy New York accent that left a mist of beer on Steve's face. "Screw this. Screw America. Screw you."

Steve was instantly reminded of a time he had nearly gotten beat up years ago when he had been the only one in a movie theater to stand up to a man complaining about a video of soldiers overseas before the show started. He had been tiny, useless Steve Rodgers then, the one who needed Bucky his bigger best friend to end the fights he started. But he was a new man now, one that could become Captain America a symbol representing everything the country had stood for in its prime. This guy could handle a fight against one disrespectful man.

"You wanna take that back?"

"You wanna make me?"

"I don't want to, but I will."

"Listen at you, talkin' like that. Who the hell do you think you are, Captain America or something?"

"Something like that."

"Well, let's see if whatever nut house you walked out of made you bullet proof…"

What happened next was such a blur, Steve could barely remember it later. The man had a gun and he had reacted, trying to keep everyone around him safe. He had thought of it as his obligation, but everyone else had not seen it that way. Faster than he would have guessed, the police and media were there to make what he had done the center of the 5 o'clock news. It was something he resolved not to get involved in. He wasn't a dancing monkey on a unicycle selling war bonds anymore. He wasn't going to give up the ability to blend in that was the only thing about waking up in the future so far.

Steve made it away from the field just in time, he hoped (never more grateful of being able to run in his entire life.) He was glad all those people were safe and would eventually enjoy a baseball game. Someone, at least, deserved to be able to enjoy a pastime like a normal person. That's when it occurs to him that he wasn't anymore. Him out in public was an act. With that acknowledgement, he lost a lot of the desire he had to re-enter the world as Fury has urged him to do. He had never been (and would never be) the kind of person that could walk past someone in real need or turn the other way while someone was being bullied. His morals didn't seem to fit in the modern world.

After the incident at the baseball field, Steve had requested to move off of the SHIELD base. He needed to be alone and not the kind of solitude that came in the presence of even a group of soldiers that barely spoke. It felt to him like he had not been truly alone a single second since he had woken up: doctors, soldiers, civilians with guns followed him everywhere. Hesitantly, Fury had granted him permission to leave (on the condition that he check in regularly.) He was even nice enough to help him find a place.

The one bedroom apartment on the top of a complex in Brooklyn Steve had decided on was only two blocks away from the house he had been raised in. When he had taken a short jog to scope out the area, he found there was now a Starbucks where his house had once stood, he had almost backed out of the deal, but eventually decided the need for solitude and silence was starting to outweigh the ghosts of his past. It was already as furnished as he would ever need with what he supposed was a decent kitchen (not that he cooked) and a bed in a small room off in a corner. The living room had a couch and a TV. Back in the 1930's, he remembered, a television had been a luxury very few people could afford. To have one sitting in a room in his home made him feel tasteless, particularly when he remembered the begging people in Central Park.

For weeks, the television remained unused and dormant. It wasn't until late one night when he was stowing some books in the cabinet the TV sat on that he even gave turning it on a single thought. Where he was poised to drop the books, there was something else, probably left ib accident by the person who had lived in the space before him. Steve didn't recognize it at first, but then he remembered the other guys at the base had called it a DVD. Now, all of the training videos for the early stages of soldier training were on these shiny discs that looked to him like something out of a science fiction film. What struck him the most was that he had recognized the title on the case: The Wizard of Oz. If he remembered right, the film had been made when he was 17 years old. It was almost as old as he was.

Steve dropped the books and held the DVD in his hand quietly for a long while. He and his mother had gone to see it (at the theater he later almost got beaten up in) one Sunday after church as a treat. When they had seen it, he hadn't thought much of it. Judy Garland was not exactly a good looking dame and her voice was just high enough being to annoy him. His mother, however, had been completely mesmerized. For weeks after they left the theater, she would hum 'somewhere over the rainbow' to herself quietly. He had pretended not to notice. But after she got sick, right at the worst before she passed away, she had started to hum it again. At the time, he hadn't understood why.

Some impulse he couldn't fully control led him to turn on the television that night. It took him an hour, but he managed to get the DVD player to work as well. When he was fairly sure it would work, he moved to the couch. Half of him was proud when he heard the signature MGM lion roar. It was a sign he had accomplished his first accomplished his first success with technology. He imagined somewhere, Howard Stark would be proud.

To Steve, sitting on a couch in his own apartment in Brooklyn in the future made the 1939 film new to him again. He watched and listened to Judy Garland like he had never seen her before in his life. And when she began to sing her song 'somewhere over the rainbow,' he felt himself start to cry for the first time in over 70 years. Everything suddenly hit him and he understood: his mother hummed the song because she had been the kind of person that had lived in world that forced her to believe in a better world somewhere to get by. Now more than ever, it was how he got through every day.

70 years later, in a time surrounded by things and people he didn't understand, Steve realized he was Dorothy in Oz. Like the little girl from Kansas, he had developed a single dream: to be a soldier and rid the world its Adolf Hitlers. Both of them had been transported to a world that had very little in common with the one they had come from. In turn, they were supposed to gain a deeper appreciation of what they had, to be come to a pace where they could sincerely declare in the end, 'there's no place like home.'

There was where the similarities in the stories ended. Dorothy had gotten to go home in the end, to tell the ones she loved she was sorry for never understanding and being ungrateful. The credits start to roll with a flash of her smile. Steve couldn't tap his boots together and get back his life in the 1940's. There was no Glinda or Great and Powerful Oz to help him regain what he lost. The only yellow outside his window was police tape they used to mark off crime scenes. He was stuck in his version of Oz. There was no way for him to back over the rainbow to where he belonged.


	5. Chapter 4: The Avengers Initiative

Chapter 4:

The Avengers Initiative

Life went on as usual for months for the Starks. Tony had never been overly concerned with the discovery of Captain America. There was never a chance that he would have noticed a shift in the world as it slowly regained a superhero. Work and play continued for him as it always had, the only shift being his growing relationship with Pepper Potts, which had absolutely nothing to do with the artic or what had been pulled out of it.

The same could almost be said for Susan. Almost. Though she attempted to act as though finding him had no effect on her, she found herself on occasion hacking into SHIELD's top secret files. She knew unfreezing had been successful, that he was now awake. In the midst of the notes, she had caught that their initial plan had been to make him believe he was still in the 1940's. From all she could gather, it had lasted all of seconds. As if anyone could have been that stupid.

When the information had come to her via hacking that he was now in a facility in Brooklyn, it had taken real restraint (something she was not used to exercising) not to try another break in. What stopped her from illegal activity was the one thing she loved more than causing chaos, surrounding herself with men as stress relief, and the good reserve alcohol Tony kept just for them at his place: science. Iron man was extremely close to giving the world something even better than keeping her brother alive. She had no right to ruin what it could do for the world by making bad press for her family name at the moment.

In reality it had been a real team effort: Pepper had been the one to have the initial light bulb of using the newly upgraded arc reactor to power something other than Iron Man and was handling the press. Tony had done the math, made it possible to make more of the new element that had replaced the one that had begun to poison him. And Susan had designed the place where it would all come together: the new, self-sustaining Stark Tower. She had been of little use since Tony had shut down the weapons manufacturing division of the company. Designing the United States military's most efficient tools had been what she prided herself on most of her adult life. As Obadiah had once put it: Tony did the math, Susan dolled it up, and he sold it. Of course, that had been before they had before they had realized he had been a psycho bent on killing them.

The first prototype was perfected and finished in the months after the discovery in the artic. Even the early designs could run the tower for a year, which would give plenty of time for them to come up a more permanent piece of technology. Though it would have taken a lot of coaxing to force her to admit it, Susan was glad to be useful around the lab again and for her family name being mentioned for something other than destruction and scandal. It was safe to say, in different ways, each of the three minds behind the new building, gleaming in the New York skyline as their child and the product of their brain power.

However, when Tony had invited her to the tower for the big "early Christmas tree lighting," one night she had said no the nicest way she could get it through her brother's head. As much as she wanted to see the tower come to life and her family name in gigantic lights illuminating the night sky, other possible views kept her from going. Any time she was along with him and Pepper, she got the overwhelming sensation she was fast becoming the uncool third wheel. The unplanned episodes of PDA were enough to make her want to run from the room screaming. She wished them the best and that somehow the woman could put a handle on some of his more self-destructive tendencies (like being poisoned by the core of the device that was keeping him alive and not bothering to tell anyone), but Susan did not want to be in on every aspect of their playtime. And because she had the feeling the evening would end in just that, she resisted the urge to crash on their date time.

The night Stark Tower was scheduled to go up in new, self-sustaining lights Susan found herself downstairs in her own private lab, humming along to Adam Lambert's newest CD and repairing a jet engine for one of her many planes. Flying had been an obsession of hers since before her dad had passed away. She had always heard that Howard Stark had been the best civilian pilot during World War II and, from a young age, aspired to be a great pilot someday. While Tony filled his free space and playrooms with cars, she filled hers with every plane she could get her wallet on. She took pride in maintaining and repairing them herself, one of the few engineering things her hands could do. On this particular evening, she had noticed some loose parts on one of the plane's engines and set up shop to remove and fix it. And of course, no night in a Stark workshop was complete without pizza and mind numbingly loud music.

"Baby, I'm on the hunt. Baby, I've got my target on you. Trouble that's what I- Hey!"

The beginning of the track suddenly stopped mid-lyric and silence filled the lab that left a buzz in Susan's ears. It took several second of scanning the room before she noticed Quentin standing in the doorway, looking at her like he had something life-and-death important to say.

"Why would you do that to Adam? He was just getting warmed up. Is the pizza here?"

"There's a man here, but he don't like a pizza delivery boy, babe."

"What does he look like then? This had better be good. I'm working."

"He looks official," the man explained. "Suit. Tie. Serious as hell expression. Balding head."

The woman sighed in expression. "That's probably just Phil. He always looks like the world's ending."

"He sounded like it too."

"Yea, he does that. He's probably looking for Tony. Just get rid of him… and turn my music back on."

"He asked for you."

The expression on her face changed. Suddenly, she too was serious. A thousand different scenarios ran though her head. Could the government really have gotten that efficient? What was the world coming to when she couldn't even hack into a few top secret files without SHIELD knocking on her door? Just as quickly, her expression changed back to I-own-the-universe. She got to her feet, unceremoniously dusted off her jeans, and slid back on her heels.

"Guess I got a date after all," she laughed quietly. "Come on, Q."

Susan and her assistant walked back up the stair and into the living room to be greeted by agent Coulson and the fact his expression was still reading full-scale alien attack-level seriousness. The woman approached the agent fearlessly, not showing the least bit of panic in spite of his. In those moments, she imagined Phil would be a horrible poker player (the kind that would broke or naked in a hurry.) His spotless appearance also reminded her she was in old, holy jeans and a well-warn blue tank top. While it did serve him right to deal with her likely covered in grease for showing up unannounced, it did put her at an imagined disadvantage with she did not appreciate.

"Hello, Phil," she finally began. "You'll have to excuse me, I wasn't expecting company tonight."

"Quite all right, Miss Stark," Coulson had known he had caught her off guard the moment he saw her wearing something that didn't look like it cost a year's worth of his salary. Clearly, she also wasn't aware of the grease smudge in the center of her forehead. He fought the urge to blush, feeling as if he was seeing her in a way that no one else likely would for years, without the shields of perfect makeup and Prada suits. Yet, he consoled himself with the fact she was only metaphorically naked. When Fury had sent him to Susan Stark's door, he had feared walking in on much worse. For a Stark, this was relatively normal.

"Well, if you're looking for my brother, he isn't here."

"Actually, I just came from visiting Mr. Stark," Phil said shortly. "The towers lit nicely. Congratulations."

"Thank you," Susan said, unable to hide her pride regarding the shiny new building that bore her family name. Then, she paused, having no idea why the agent had come knocking at her door. "Tony isn't in the back of your car, is he? Because if he is…"

"It's nothing like that, Miss Stark." The agent interrupted before she could go any farther into an I-didn't-do-it speech she no doubt rehearsed frequently. "We're calling in your brother on a… well, a special assignment and we were hoping we could have your cooperation as a consultant."

"My cooperation?" She blinked. This was the last reason on her long mental list of reasons she expected SHIELD to come calling especially after her brother had failed his test to join the Avengers Initiative and they had both refused to be science toys. "Phil, Tony and I both told you that your band of storm troopers couldn't afford us, and in case that needs any clarification we weren't taking about the money. And besides, I'm not 'Iron Girl.' I don't have any superpowers hiding out in my closet, so…"

If Phil hadn't known better, he would have sworn he could have detected a small bit of bitterness in the last part of her sentence. Of course, he didn't know that he could entirely hold it against her. Being ordinary in the presence of superheroes (even if you are an elite government agent or a billionaire with a genius level IQ) had its ways of damaging an ego. Yet, he wondered if it was also a tool he could use to his advantage. Maybe in this respect, they weren't that different.

"Things have changed since then," he replied, hoping to peak her interest enough to lure her into the way of thinking he needed her in.

"Like what?" Susan asked. "My thoughts on consulting for SHIELD haven't changed. What exactly is in it for me, Phil? And don't start throwing dollar amounts at me. I have that already."

"You'll be helping us safe the world from the greatest threat its faced since World War II."

Susan looked at him momentarily. If he had been intending to peak her interest, he had succeeded. She thought back over his sentence, deciding he had chosen his words very carefully. "Any will… anything else from World War II be involved?"

The agent's face turned into a grin for the first time since the conversation began. His hand moved quickly across his jacket pocket where his vintage cards were safely tucked away. 'Bingo' he thought to himself. He had been right in his thought that they had a few things in common after all, which he had suspected before when he had caught her and Tony sneaking into the artic facility. Captain Rodger's name was all he had to imply to ensure the woman's involvement.

"It's a possibility, yes." He answered carefully.

"I'm in."

"Thank you, Miss Stark."

"Yea, yea. Just give me 5 minutes."

Without even waiting for his response, Susan rushed to her bedroom and adjoining bathroom as fast as her heels could take her. Of course, there was no time for a show with the world being in danger, but she used every second of the five minutes carefully getting ready. When she was done, she took a last look in the mirror and was satisfied. A suitable dress and matching shoes and her hair tamed and back. After so many years, one of the last promises Howard Stark had made her was being made good on. Just like her father before her during the war, she was off to save the world with Captain America.


End file.
